The Sixty Fives
by Dawn Rei Faun
Summary: AU. During the latter half of the 60s, four young New Yorkers form a band and will experience short-lived fame, the good and bad sides of it, and even tragedy.
1. We Gotta Get Out of This Place

1. This is Alternative Universe, so that's why the story doesn't take place in Toyama or Shinjuku with the other Ronin Warriors/Troopers.

2. This fanfic, if I decide to keep it going, will take place in the '60s and beyond. This is based on all the movies about the bands from the 60s (especially "Sweetwater"), Valley of the Dolls and especially Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a little of Forrest Gump, and any of the music documentaries about 1960s bands VH1 used to show (when I was little) before that channel became Celebreality...

3. This is rated M for adult language, sexual scenes, drug use (...), and a character death. I don't own anything but some insignificant OCs.

* * *

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California, Early August 1969...

She didn't know how long she was hiding under the bed, or how many times she heard the guns and the screams. She had tried to call the police that some women and a man were trespassing the house, trying to murder people. The phone line was cut. She really wanted to call the husband. But he was somewhere else (she forgot where), unable to help his pregnant wife and her favorite actress.

And she might be next.

Suddenly she heard someone say, "There might be someone upstairs."

She whimpered and then she tried to shut herself up, before they could hear her as one of them was coming up. She started crying. Why was this happening? Why would these people come and murder everyone? Why wasn't she with her friends? But then again she had no idea where they were. Except for her boyfriend. He was hanging out with that guy who played with Hendrix last time she saw him. She knew that they were all drifting apart.

And then came the baby. She wanted to tell him that she was three months pregnant, carrying his baby. She was going to be a mother. Now, it may never happen...

Suddenly, the door in the room was kicked open. She tried her best not to make a sound, but she was crying even harder than before. Her heart began beating rapidly and she shook with immense fear. The only thing she could see were feet walking around the room, and the closet being opened.

And then, she felt herself being pulled mercilessly out from under the bed. She screamed as one of the female murderers threw her on the bed.

Two women were staring at her, their eyes stone cold in contrast to her tearful and frightened eyes.

"Looks like we got a little girl hiding from under the bed like a cowardly little baby," one muttered, her voice almost monotone.

"Yes, we don't take kindly around cowards. We see them worse than the parasites that roam our bodies," the other one added. She then pulled out a gun and aimed it at the crying girl's head.

The only thing the crying girl could do now was scream, "Rowen!"

* * *

_New York, three years earlier..._

A female hand started playing the first notes on her rhythm guitar to the tune of a classic by The Animals. The dark-haired, caramel-skinned girl was wearing a short, orange dress and was concentrating on her notes. Soon, the blue-haired young man, on the drums—and wearing a tuxedo—tapped lightly on the cymbals with his drumsticks. The guitarist, a dark-haired, caramel-skinned, and somewhat brawny guy, had waited until it was his time to play. Finally, another young woman, her hark hair past her waist, walked up to the microphone. While, hitting her hand very lightly with a tambourine, she began singing in a low voice:16

"In this dirty old part of the city,  
Where the sun refused to shine,  
People tell me there ain't no use in tryin' "

The blue-haired started tapping on one of the drums now.

"Now my man you're so young and handsome,"

The guitarist started to play some notes, now.

"And one thing I know is true  
You'll be dead before your time is due,"

And she and the other girls both sang, "I know..."

Their classmates started dancing to the tune, as the drummer began pounding on the drums.

The vocalist sang in a higher tone, hitting with the tambourine her hip, "Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin'!"

"Bed a-dyin'," The other girl sang in a lower tone.

"Watched his hair been turnin' gray!"

"Turnin' gray."

"He's been workin' and slavin' his life awaaaay!"

As the music got louder, the girls began to shout:

"Yeaaahhh!  
Yeaaahhh!  
Yeaaahhh!  
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"

Then came the chorus, with the vocalist singing in a higher tone than the other girl:

"We gotta get out of this place,  
If it's the last thing we ever do!  
We gotta get out of this place..."

And then the vocalist alone sang quietly and smiled, " 'Cause, boy, there's a better life, for me and you."

After the song was over, a man came up to the stage and shouted, "The Brothers and the Sisters, everybody!" Their classmates cheered and whistled as the group took a bow.

* * *

Later on, the four sat and drank their fruit punch while their classmates danced to slow music.

"Jesus!" The guitarist, Kento snapped. "It's 1966, and we still have to dance to music from 1959."

"The only way we were going to have this prom anyway," Drummer Rowen replied. "You know how the faculty is. Thank god our music teacher convinced the staff to let us play."

The singer, Kayura, smiled, "I really don't care. They loved us. That's all that matters to me."

The rhythm guitarist and backing vocals, Luna, said nothing. She just continued to drink her punch. Then she muttered, "I hate this damn punch."

"For once I agree," Kento spoke. "I feel like spiking it."

"AHEM!" Kento looked up and saw the school principle staring right at him. "Spiking what with what, Mister Rei Faun."

"Spiking the punch with fun!" Kento grinned. The other snickered and giggled before the principle went on. Then Kento muttered, "Fatass."

"Spiking the punch with fun," Luna smirked mercilessly at him. "Very original."

"Go off yourself, Luna."

"Up yours."

"Bite me."

Kayura and Rowen shook their heads at their friends. The two never got along. Now Kayura and Rowen, on the other hand...

Suddenly a song by Pasty Cline started playing. Kayura loved her. "Oh! I love this song." She turned to Rowen. "Dance with me?"

Rowen sighed. He hated to dance. "Oh, all right." She dragged him to the dance floor, and started to slow dance.

Kento and Luna slowly watched them dance for a while. Then Kento asked, "I wonder if those two have done it, yet."

"What business is it of yours?" Luna retorted.

"I was just CURIOUS! Can't a person be curious?"

"Curiosity killed the cat."

Kento mumbled something.

* * *

Luna and Kayura, friends since the fifth grade, decided to spend the night over Kayura's house. As Luna looked up at her friend, who was undressing, she sometimes envied her. She was beautiful, all the guys wanted her, but she chose Rowen, a gentlemen. What's more, she was confident about her body and was modest at the same time. Luna, however, was a tomboy. In fact she felt uncomfortable with the dress she had to wear for the prom. The idea of sex and dating still grossed her out or was uninteresting (one of the few teens at the time to think this way). Not one guy asked her out. She didn't even like putting on swimsuits.

Luna knew that Rowen and Kayura did it once a couple of weeks ago...

"I saw Richard smiling at you," Kayura spoke, breaking Luna from her thoughts.

"That asshole?"

She looked at her. "Come on. He's very nice."

"No he's not! He called me a fucking dyke because I was the only girl wearing jeans at that stupid homecoming."

"Well, I thought you looked beautiful in that dress you wore tonight."

"Aww my aunt made me wear it. And the make-up was uncomfortable on my face."

"You're just not used to it."

"So have you decided about where you're going to after we graduate?"

"Luna, you and I have the whole year to decide." The girls were a grade lower than the guys. Still they were able to attend because they were playing in a band. Kayura then frowned. "Rowen got accepted to UCLA. Kento to another college down there."

Luna didn't know this. "Are you kidding me?!" She sat closer to her. "Are you two ever going to see each other again?"

"I don't know." She sighed. "I want to go with him."

Luna was upset as well, but for another reason: They won't get to play in a band anymore if the guys left. But she understood a little about why. Rowen was a smart man. She knew he would go to a college far away from here. Either that or Harvard. Rowen chose UCLA because it was more culturally liberal. Kento only wanted to go to one because it was the only way the two guys wouldn't get drafted down to 'Nam. They both, especially Kento detested the war. All of them were of Asian descent, so it felt like they were killing their own kind.

Anyway, she spoke to Kayura, "We have the summer. We can play a few more songs, and you can spend more time with Rowen before they go."

She sighed, "I guess."

* * *

The song they sang in chapter one: "We Got To Get Out of the Place" The Animals. For the time being, all the titles for the chapters will be the title of the songs from the 60s.


	2. Yesterday

The guys were born in the fall of 1947, while the girls were born in 1949.

Rowen Thompson Hashiba was born to a white mother and a Japanese-American father in Brooklyn. His parents soon divorced and he went to stay with his father. While his father was very influential with his education, it was his mother—a feminist journalist and a beatnik—who influenced him to (starting in his preteens) question life and the society they lived in. As far as music was concerned, the first type of music he liked to listen to was jazz, thanks to his mother. Jazz prompted him to take up drums.

He was at the top of his class in all his school. His father had had a hard time accepting the fact that his son was going to California instead of going to Harvard.

Kento Rei Faun was born to a Chinese-Japanese father and a Chinese mother in Chinatown, the oldest of five children. His parents were Chinese immigrants who fled China during the civil war. They both owned a very influential Chinese restaurant in Manhattan, which made them quite wealthy. Kento didn't care about that. The first music he listened to that influenced him was the Beatles, as well as many guitarists during the late fifties and early sixties.

He was a strong supporter of peace in Vietnam and Civil Rights. One day in highschool, he got in trouble for writing about Malcolm X and why he supported him.

Rowen and Kento met when they were in the sixth grade, when Kento wanted to know how he was able to solve a math problem. Somehow, Rowen began helping him with math and the soon became friends afterwords.

Kayura Miyamoto was born to Nisei parents in Manhattan, both of them working prestigious jobs after the war. She was going to have a baby sister four years later, but the baby and her mother died soon after birth. She was then raised by her father and an aunt. She began playing the violin and the flute, and like Rowen, her favorite music was jazz. However, she began listening to every female singer, including Patsy Cline, Doris Day, and even Aretha Franklin. One day, after listening to Patsy Cline during her preteen years, she decided she wanted to be a singer. Naturally, her father disapproved of it, saying it wouldn't pay well, but her aunt encouraged her.

Luna Abdul Pollack (born Luna Abdul Kalawakan), the only one that doesn't have one drop of Japanese blood, was born to a drug-addicted Filipino father and a Pakistani mother in Harlem. She was the second child of the father, who married a white woman six years earlier and gave birth to a son. After their father committed suicide (when she was a toddler) and after her mother died of alcoholism, Luna and her half brother were living in the streets until he got killed in a brawl with the police in 1958. She was picked up and was transferred from foster home to foster home, suffering from abuse (one of the foster fathers tried to rape her), until a black elder woman (Mrs. Pollack) adopted her at the age of twelve.

Soon, the music she soon fell in love with, soul and Motown, and the rhythm guitars she heard in the songs, prompt her to want to play a rhythm guitar. Her "mother," the first parent since her birth mother to be nice and kind to her, supported her all the way, and an uncle gave her one for Christmas. Another thing that kept her spirits high, if she had any left, was comedy. She loved listening to comedies on the radio and the Three Stooges.

Kayura and Luna met at school while Luna was still in a foster home. The two girls couldn't have been more different: Kayura a happy "girly" girl from a prestigious Nisei family, and Luna an orphaned, abused foster child, who became a tomboy and had a bit of a temper. The two later realized that the loved music and wanted to spend the rest of their lives playing.

One day, in early '65, Kayura soon met Rowen at an ice cream shop. A song by Dusty Springfield began playing, and Kayura began singing every word of the song. Rowen was impressed, and pretty soon he fell in love with her. It took Kayura awhile to return the love because of her father, but she eventually rebelled and the two began dating.

Some time later after She also met Kento, Kayura finally introduced Luna to the guys. While Luna became instant friends with Rowen, she and Kento would soon engage in a battle of insults...

What each of them had in common was that they all wanted to play in a band and be famous. They took up their instruments and moved over to Rowen's where they began practicing, becoming a cover band.

By then, they were huge fans of The Mamas and the Papas, so in homage to them, the teenagers named themselves, The Brothers and the Sisters, performing songs by the Mamas and the Papas, as well as other music from famous bands. From the beginning, Kayura had asked her to sing backing vocals. Luna was pretty nervous about that, but since the guys didn't want to do any singing, she had no choice but to try. Luna's voice was less "lady-like" than Kayura's. However, when Luna's mother saw them play, she commented how the girls' voices, different as they are, created perfect harmony.

The first "public" performance they got to do was at Kento's youngest sister's birthday. While, Kento's mother didn't like the music, the kids were cheering for more.

Their performance at the high school prom a year later was their third "public" performance.

One obstacle stood in their way now: The guys were moving to California, and the girls still had another year to complete. It was very doubtful that Luna's mother and especially Kayura's father would ever let them go with the guys...


End file.
